Friday, April 21, 2017

It
is a pleasure to be here with you today.
Thank you for the invitation. I
am very pleased to be here with your District Superintendent, Rev. David
Kim. Rev. Kim is a remarkable person in
so many ways. He has a deep faith, a
delightful sense of humor, a strikingly smooth golf swing, and a remarkable
singing voice. Have you heard him
sing? I am wondering, though, if since
his appointment as the Saginaw Bay D. S., if he has learned to sing the old Lefty
Frizzell song, “Saginaw, Michigan.”

You
may know that I am from Minnesota, though my grandfather on my dad’s side was
born in Bay City. He moved to Duluth,
Minnesota as a young child following the death of his mother. Minnesota and Michigan share quite a lot. Ojibwa people lived in both places. The French were some of the first Europeans
to find their way to both states.
Mining, logging and agriculture have been important. Minnesota has never had a president. Michigan had Gerald Ford, the closest
Minnesota got was Vice-President Walter Mondale. One other difference, and this does my heart
good, is that Methodism is more prevalent here than in Minnesota. Religious affiliation in Minnesota is heavily
Roman Catholic and Lutheran. Of course,
Minnesota is the home of Garrison Keillor, and the combination of Garrison
Keillor and Lutherans has often been just plain fun. What do you get when you cross a Lutheran
with a Buddhist? Someone who sits up all
night worrying about nothing. (Pretty Good Joke Book, 5th p.
133)

Keillor
loves to tell a story to make us smile.
The young minister was asked by the funeral director to conduct a
graveside service for a homeless man with no family or friends. The cemetery was way back in the country, and
the minister got lost. Finally, he saw
the backhoe in the field and the gravediggers standing by, but no hearse was in
sight. He hurried over to the grace and
saw that the vault lid was already in place.
He opened up his Bible and began to preach. He preached about God’s mercy and the parable
of the Prodigal Son and the hope of the Resurrection, and then he bowed his
head in prayer. One of the workers said,
“I ain’t never seen anything like this before… and I’ve been putting in septic
tanks for twenty years.” (122)

Laughter
is good for the soul, but there is so much in the world that is no laughing
matter, so much that tears at our hearts and brings tears to our eyes. Just this week we saw images of children
dying as a result of a chemical weapons bombing in Syria. We know that in our world too many go hungry,
too many children go without clean water or adequate health care. Wars and oppressive regimes mark too many
places. The world economy works
fabulously for a few, adequately for many, but leaves too many with too little. In the United States we continue to struggle
with the legacies of slavery and our treatment of indigenous people. Race still divides us. The church itself is not immune from
difficulty. We struggle with race. In The United Methodist Church, we are
struggling with how we can stay together given important differences in
theology and on the inclusion of LGBT persons.
Then there are all the personal disappointments in life that can take
their toll – friends who turn away, relationships that go sour, awards not
received, the unkind word. Finally, we
all confront the reality that our existence is a bodily existence, and these
bodies bleed and get sick, and eventually give out. We in the church walk with each other through
the valley of the shadow of death.

A
few years ago, an essay written by a Polish philosopher was published, the
title of which was “Is God Happy?” (Leszek Kolakowski, Is God Happy?) Leszek Kolakowski concluded that God is not
happy in an unchanging sense, because God must notice and care about “human
suffering… all the misery, the horrors and atrocities that nature brings down
on people or people inflict on each other” (213). He then turns his essay to human beings and
says that we cannot be unchangingly happy either because even if we can
experience “pleasure, moments of wonderment and great enchantment… love and
joy” (213)… we can never forget the existence of evil and the misery of the
human condition” (214).

There
are deep sorrows in the world, and we cannot ignore that. Even in the church, committed to God’s love
and to sharing and living God’s love in Jesus Christ, we know how to hurt
others. Church disagreements can sometimes
erupt into nasty fights. And just this
week a priest and his secretary were indicted for embezzling $450,000 from the
church and related charities. Aren’t you
glad you got up to come here this morning?

In
the midst of all this, we have a faith that puts joy at its core. “The joy of the Lord is your strength”
(Nehemiah 8:10). “With joy you will draw
water from the well of salvation,” Isaiah says.
And when God’s Spirit is at work in our lives, what is one of the
evidences? Joy (Galatians 5:22-26) – in
fact, joy comes right after love in the list.
The renowned religious scholar Huston Smith, who died December 30 and
who grew up the son of Methodist missionaries in China, wrote in his book The
Soul of Christianity: When Jesus was
in danger, his disciples were alarmed; but otherwise it was impossible to be
sad in Jesus’ company (78). Smith
goes on to say that one of the remarkably attractive qualities of the community
of the early followers of Jesus was their joy.
Outsiders found this
baffling. These scattered Christians
were not numerous. They were not wealthy
or powerful, and they were in constant danger of being killed. Yet they had laid hold of an inner peace that
found expression in a joy that was unquestionable. (79) The German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
who lost his life at the hands of the Nazis, once put it very simply. “Discipleship is joy.”

On
the one hand, we have all the very real hurt and suffering in the world, and on
the other hand, we have a faith that has joy at its core. How do we make sense of that?

I
have begun to distinguish joy and happiness, though the terms can often be used
interchangeably. Perhaps happiness is
something that depends upon circumstances.
There are moments when things are going well, and we experience
happiness. Perhaps in such times we can
bracket off some of the hurt and pain of the wider world, and for some moments,
that is o.k. If we were “happy” in that
sense all the time, people could legitimately ask if we really understand and
care about the world in which we live.
The Polish philosopher in his essay on the happiness of God writes that
“being truly human involves the ability to feel compassion, to participate in
the pain and joy of others” (212). There
is something very human about being able to feel pain, our own and the hurt and
pain of others. We cannot be “happy” all
the time.

Maybe
joy is something a little different. I
have come to think of joy as the quality of a large heart, of an open heart. Joy is a basic stance toward life more than
an emotion of happiness. A number of
years ago, I read some words that have been of great help to me, that led me
into some new dimensions in my journey of faith. I am changing some of the words just a bit
because the writer, Elizabeth Lesser, uses the word “happiness” in places when I
think what she is describing is my understanding of joy. The
opposite of [joy] is a closed heart.
[Joy] is a heart so soft and expansive that it can hold all of the
emotions in a cradle of openness. A
[joyful] heart is one that is larger at all times than any one emotion. An open heart feels everything – including
anger, grief, and pain – and absorbs it into a bigger and wiser experience of
reality…. We may think that by closing
the heart we’ll protect ourselves from feeling the pain of the world, but
instead we isolate ourselves even more from joy. (The New American
Spirituality, 180)

Joy
is a large heart, an open heart – open to seeing the world in its amazing
beauty and its horrific brutality, and staying open. It is a compassionate heart, ready to embrace
with kindness those who are hurting, ready to act courageously in the world to
make the world more just and peaceful, ready to laugh with those who laugh, and
weep with those who weep. Joy relishes
happy moments, and deepens them. Joy is
a trusting heart, trusting in the power of love to overcome.

Such
joy is not dependent upon happy circumstances.
Our joy as followers of Jesus Christ is rooted in God’s love, God’s
incredible, never-give-up-on-us-ever, no-not-ever love. That’s the heart of our gospel, our good
news. God’s love is always reaching out
to us in Jesus Christ. The grace of
Jesus Christ is to be found around every corner. This love is strong. This love is deep. This love’s purposes cannot finally be
defeated. In the words of Paul, For I am convinced that neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able
to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans
8:38-39)

Because
our lives are rooted and grounded in this love of God, our basic stance in life
is one of joy, the joy of a large heart that is able at any one time to hold a
range of emotions. This is the joy of an
open heart, a heart that does not live in fear of life, but is open to
creativity, curiosity, adventure. This
is the joy of a compassionate heart, a heart that sees and feels the hurt and
pain and destruction we find in the world and though sorrowful, responds
energetically as best it can to bring hope and healing and new life.

We
are a people of joy. The joy of the Lord
is our strength. With joy we draw water
out of the wells of salvation. The well
of God’s love is deep, and we draw buckets of joy. We are people in whom the Spirit of God is at
work, and when the Spirit is at work, one of the fruits is joy.

The
first sermon I preached here in Michigan as your bishop was a sermon I preached
three times at three welcome events.
Some of you may have attended one of them. I’m not going to ask you to raise your hands. In that sermon, I said that I hoped four
watermarks would characterize our time together as Michigan United Methodists. Watermarks – you know, those marks that are
found embedded in high quality paper, marks you still write over to tell your
story, but that are always in the background of what you write. I said that I would like joy to be one of the
watermarks of our time together. I quoted the poet Wendell Berry, “be joyful, though you have
considered all the facts.” I love that
line, and I think the truth behind it is that we can be joyful as Christians
because among the “facts” in our lives is the fact of God’s incredible, never-give-up-on-us-ever, no-not-ever love.

So
though the world is torn by hatred and war and violence in too many places, be
joyful though you have considered all the facts, and let the joy of the Lord be
a strength to build justice and peace and reconciliation.

Though
too many children go to be hungry, or go unvaccinated, or are left on the
streets to fend for themselves, be joyful though you have considered all the
facts, and let the joy of the Lord be a strength to act courageously and
compassionately to heal a broken world.

Though
the human beings can be cruel toward one another, be joyful though you have
considered all the facts, and let the joy of the Lord be a strength to love.

Though
our evangelistic witness has been hampered by the way some who name Jesus live
in ways that don’t very adequately embody the spirit of Jesus, be joyful though
you have considered all the facts, and let the joy of the Lord be a strength to
humbly and kindly share the good news of God’s love in Jesus.

And
when our hearts are joyfully open and large, we are also better able to see the
wonder and beauty in the world, places where God’s grace shines through so
amazingly – a sunrise or sunset over a great lake, the sounds of beautiful
music, the colors in a work of art, the kindness of an embrace, the gentleness
of human touch.

God’s
Spirit continue to work within each of us to enlarge and open our hearts in
joy. The joy of the Lord is our
strength, and we’ve got buckets of it.
Amen.

It is a pleasure to be here with you
this evening. My wife Julie sends her
regrets. She was planning on being with
me this evening, but has been in Billings, Montana to attend the funeral of a
beloved uncle. Her flight into Detroit
arrives just before 9 p.m. so I am feeling really relaxed about our time.

The Scripture reading is from the
Gospel of Luke. For many Luke’s gospel
is among their favorites because only there do we find some of the most
remembered teachings of Jesus – the story of the Good Samaritan, the story of
the Prodigal Son, the story of Jesus reading in the synagogue at Nazareth (“The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me…). Luke’s
telling of the Jesus story, Luke’s gospel, is among my favorites for many of
those same reasons, but also and maybe especially because of the story of Zacchaeus. Jesus
entered Jericho and was passing through it.
A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was
rich. He was trying to see who Jesus
was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. You know it is going to be a good story!

What I would like to do is read this
story with a soundtrack. I like sermons
with soundtracks, and I thought of a couple of possibilities. There is the 70s super group from Sweden,
ABBA and their song “Take a Chance.” But
I like even better Steve Winwood’s song, “While You See a Chance.” While you see a chance, take it. There is something vitally important to the
Christian life in that, to following Jesus along the Jesus way. If you don’t think so, I’ve only got about an
hour to convince you!

Jesus is passing through Jericho and
in the town was a man named Zacchaeus.
We know a couple of things about him.
He was short. The average height
at the time was about 5’1” – so it is likely Zacchaeus was under 5’. I’m liking the story better already. We also know he was a chief tax
collector. Already there is some irony
in the story. Zacchaeus is the Greek
rendering of a common Hebrew name which meant “innocent.” Yet Zacchaeus is a tax collector, and that
role involved cooperation with the Roman imperial system that many Jews
considered traitorous to their law.
Beyond that, Zaccheaus has become rich in his occupation.

Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus, but
cannot for there are crowds of people and he cannot see over them. He runs ahead of the crowd and climbs a
sycamore tree. Zacchaeus takes a
chance. He is religiously curious. He is doing well. What would compel him to seek out Jesus? It strikes me that an important dimension to
evangelism is helping people get to the place where they are willing to take a
chance on Jesus. It is not always an
easy task. The church has often given
Jesus a bad name. I was at a gathering
the other night, a conversation about the inclusion of LGBTQ persons in the
United Methodist Church. Stories were
shared about how hurtful the church has often been to LGBTQ persons and to
their families. Over the years I have
heard a number of stories told by lesbian and gay people who tried to take
their lives because they were convinced that they were beyond the love and
grace of God. Stories were also shared the
other night about how some who hold what we might call more traditional views
have been labeled and mistreated by those in the church who disagree with
them. Martin Luther King, Jr. once
called 11 a.m. on Sunday the most segregated hour in America – and that was
when more people were in church on Sundays.
Throughout history people have been enslaved in the name of Jesus,
people have been killed in the name of Jesus, people have been hurt in the name
of Jesus, people have been hated in the name of Jesus, people have been
segregated by race in the name of Jesus.

Yet, yet there remains something
beyond all the ways the church has messed up.
In a wonderful new book entitled Days of Awe and Wonder, a
collection of writings and speeches and interviews of the late Marcus Borg,
Borg writes about why he is Christian. I think the Christian message, the Christian
gospel, speaks to the two deepest yearnings of most human beings. One of those yearnings is for a fuller
connection to what is…. I also think
that most people yearn for the world to be a better place. These two yearnings are at the heart of the
Christian message. The first is the
yearning for God. The second is the
yearning for a better world that is expressed in the second great commandment,
to love your neighbor as yourself. (189)

What yearnings of the heart
compelled Zacchaeus to climb a tree to see Jesus? Did he yearn for God, and to know himself
loved by God? Did he yearn for a better
world? Perhaps, and he took a chance
that this Jesus might be of some help.
Can we help others take that chance on Jesus?

Jesus sees Zacchaeus, and invites
himself to his home. “I must stay at
your house today.” Jesus takes a chance
on Zacchaeus. Jesus took a lot of
chances on people, and the reaction is predictable. All who
saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a
sinner.” Evangelism is about helping
people take a chance on Jesus, but we also need to be willing to take a chance
on them. We need to reach out, to
notice, to welcome. Jesus sees
Zacchaeus. He sees Zacchaeus, not just a
short man, not just a tax collector, he sees Zacchaeus. He calls him by name.

Friends, you are taking some chances
here. Your $4 million expansion is
taking a chance on people. You want to
be able to welcome others. You want to
help others get to the place where they will take a chance on Jesus. You want to see people fed and clothed in the
name of Jesus. You want people to
discern their gifts. We sometimes use
this phrase “taking a chance” rather flippantly. That’s not how I am using it here. You have worked hard. You have planned diligently and
intelligently. You have made deep
commitments to the mission of this church.
You stayed with it in the midst of a pastoral change. This is not taking a chance like flipping a
coin, it is taking a thoughtful chance to expand your outreach and mission, but
it is taking a chance like Jesus took a chance on Zacchaeus.

Jesus goes to Zacchaeus’ house, and
there Zacchaeus takes yet another chance.
He commits himself to growing, to developing, to a deeper relationship
with Jesus. “Look, half of my possessions,
Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I
will pay back four times as much.”
Zacchaeus has moved from curious to committed. He wondered if Jesus might be able to address
some of those deep yearnings, might help him find what was missing in his
life. Then he staked something of
himself, committed himself to this Jesus and the Jesus way.

That, too, is part of what we are
about as the church, moving from curious to committed. And, I don’t think that is a one-time
movement. The Christian life, the
journey with Jesus, is an on-going adventure where we are curious about the
next steps and then commit ourselves to taking them. Someday this phase of your ministry will be
completed, at least in some sense.
Expect, then, that the Spirit of God will begin to place some curious
ideas in your midst, new dreams for reaching people and caring for a bruised
and hurting world. You will be able to
move from curious to committed in new ways.

While you see a chance, take
it. Zacchaeus did that a couple of
times. Jesus did that with
Zacchaeus. Allow me to put forward just
a few more thoughts about the Christian life as taking chances. I would like to develop just a few more
thoughts, and I really was only kidding about going until 8:30.

The Christian life is about taking
thoughtful and prayerful chances. It is
an adventure. One of my favorite images
for that is offered by an author named Patrick Henry in a delightfully titled
book The Ironic Christian’s Companion.
Once upon a time the term
“Christian” meant wider horizons, a larger heart, minds set free, room to move
around. But these days “Christian”
sounds pinched, squeezed, narrow. Many
people who identify themselves as Christians seem to have leap-frogged over
life, short-circuited the adventure….
Curiosity, imagination, exploration, adventure are not preliminary to
Christian identity, a kind of booster rocket to be jettisoned when spiritual
orbit is achieved. They are part of the
payload. (8-9)

While you see a chance take it, and
if we are not taking some chances, if there is no adventure, including the deep
adventure of exploring more deeply the inner self, including the wide adventure
of asking how God’s love affects how we think about and address pressing social
issues, if there is no adventure in our journey of faith and as a faith
community, then perhaps we need to climb a tree to see Jesus again. I don’t think Zacchaeus’ climbing days were
over after that one meal with Jesus.

Taking a chance can be chaotic. You don’t need me to tell you that! Taking holy chance, though, is part of God’s
creativity. Another one of my spiritual
teachers is the Benedictine nun Joan Chittister. We’ve never met, but her writings have
accompanied me along my journey with Jesus helping me move from curiosity to
commitment to curiosity again. In a
recent work, Between the Dark and the Daylight, which I have been using
as part of my own devotional life, Chittister tells a story about the painter
Pablo Picasso. Once Picasso’s home was
burgled, and the painter told the police he would paint a picture of the
intruder. “And on the strength of that picture,” the French police reported
later, “we arrested a mother superior, a government minister, a washing
machine, and the Eiffel Tower.” (83)
Chittester goes on to write about the relationship between confusion/chaos
and creativity. Confusion is a beautiful thing without which no greater beauty can
possibly be imagined…. The marriage of
confusion and creativity is the beginning of new life. (84, 84)

Imagine yourself into the scene in
Jericho. Crowds following Jesus, so
numerous that a short man cannot even see into the center of the
gathering. Zacchaeus runs and climbs
into a tree. Jesus calls to him. Did he have to shout because the crowds were
so noisy? Who was he calling to? Why was this wealthy man up in a tree? Chaos, confusion – then creativity when a
connection was made. Zacchaeus’ life was
changed. He became as innocent as his
name.

One final thought before wrapping
up. When you take chances there are
unexpected ripple effects that also touch people’s lives. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote
about the early Methodist movement, The
Methodist preachers aimed at saving men’s souls in the next world, but
incidentally they gave a new direction to emotions energizing the world (Adventures
of Ideas, 22). Whitehead went on to
say that the Methodists produced the
final wave of popular feeling which drove the anti-slavery movement to success (23). He was writing primarily about the British
context. The early Methodist took
chances in reaching out to people in new ways, and in connecting them more with
God through Jesus, society was also changed.

As we take chances in our journey of
faith, as we take chances in our ministry, we cannot know how the Spirit might
use unleashed creativity to touch lives in ways we never quite imagined. How were the lives of the poor who were
helped by Zacchaeus changed? How about
those people who he had defrauded? Did
some of them end up taking a chance on Jesus?
Did any of them find new ways to be generous?

While you see a chance, take it –
thoughtfully and prayerfully, but with a sense of adventure. We take chances to expand our ministry and to
grow in our faith because finally God is always taking chances on us. Isn’t that at the heart of the Christian gospel,
the good news that we share? God is
always taking chances on us. When our
love fails, God’s love remains steadfast.
God entrusts to us sharing in God’s very work – treasure in clay vessels
to use Paul’s image (II Corinthians 4:7).

Christian life, living the Jesus
way, is a life of taking wise, thoughtful and prayerful chances. Curiosity, imagination, exploration,
adventure – a little chaos and confusion as a prelude to creativity are at the
heart of this Jesus’ life. In one of his
poems, the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, writes “so walk on air against your better
judgement” (“The Gravel Walks”). There
is something to that if we are to follow Jesus.
It is just what Zacchaeus did.

While you see a chance to think in
new ways about your faith, to deepen your connection to the God who is always
reaching out to you in Jesus, take it.
Walk on air against your better judgement.

While you see a chance to help
others take a chance on Jesus, take it.
Walk on air against your better judgement.

While you see a chance to reach out
to the hurting, the yearning, the hungry, the least, to share good news, to
share bread, to work for justice, take it.
Walk on air against your better judgement.

While you see a chance to move from
curiosity to commitment to curiosity again, take it. Walk on air against your better judgement.

The Christian life, the Jesus way is
a way of adventure, imagination, curiosity, creativity, sometimes a little
chaotic, sometimes a little confusing, but always rippling out into the world
in profound and unexpected ways. While
you see a chance take it. Walk on air
against your better judgement and thank you for all the ways you are already
doing that in the name and Spirit of Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Thank you for
your kind invitation to be here today, and thank you for being here.

A person of
taste. For some of us of a certain
generation, that phrase evokes the beginning of a song: “Please allow me to
introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste.” It is not a song that probably makes most
seminary top ten lists, The Rolling Stones, “Sympathy for the Devil.”

The very idea of
“taste” seems a rather odd topic for a seminary sermon, or a sermon anywhere. It seems more suited for the style section of
the Sunday New York Times, or if we
take the definition another way, the culinary section. In either case, taste is something that seems
at best, pleasant, essentially ephemeral, probably a distraction to the serious
business of following Jesus and leading the church.

Yet one might
think about taste differently, and in doing so dig deeply into being a follower
of Jesus, into being a person shaped by God’s Spirit, and into being in
ministry and leading the church in our time.
That’s my plan.

John Wesley, to
whom we United Methodists trace our stream of the Christian tradition composed
an essay published in 1780, “Thoughts Upon Taste.” The brief piece is a response to another’s
essay about the same subject. Wesley
makes appreciative remarks, but also some critical comments, before engaging in
some of this own creative work on “taste.”
Wesley writes about taste as an internal sense that relishes something,
that perceives something with pleasure.
Good taste involves relishing excellence, and that could include relishing
the beauty to be found in virtue. Good
taste was something “much to be desired.”
“It greatly increases the pleasures of life, which are not only
innocent, but useful.” Good taste could
help a person render “greater service to our fellow creatures.” Especially for those who often engaged in
conversation, good taste would help a person be more “agreeable” and
“profitable” in conversation.

This essay fits
well with interesting descriptions of Wesley found in a work from the
1890s. A parishioner of mine from
Duluth, MN lent me a rare book on Wesley, John Wesley: a study for the times,
Thomas J. Dodd, DD (1891). The author, wanted
to show “the illustrious founder of Methodism as the great, broad, liberal man
he was” (5). His journal abounds with allusions to the Greek and Latin classics, and
in quotations, which show not only that he was conversant with the great poets,
orators, historians, and philosophers of antiquity but that he possessed the
taste to appreciate their excellences” (35-36). In
history, philosophy, poetry, romance, physical science, philology, equally with
theology, he was at home with the great thinkers of all ages (37).

In Wesley’s own
thoughts, and in some writings about him, the idea of “taste” begins to take us
deeper into our hearts and souls, deeper into what it might mean to be a
follower of Jesus, a Spirit-formed person.
“Taste” can be used as beginning idea for moving into a conversation
about our deepest desires, our most profound hungers, that which we
relish. I think one could speak
helpfully about the work of God’s Spirit in our lives as the work of shaping
our tastes – our hungers, our desires, our pleasures.

Our Scriptures
use “taste” in such a way. Psalm 34
invites us to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Here taste is a verb, but the verse is not
about taking a bite out of God. It is
about experience, about sensing God, but also about developing a taste for God,
because “those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.” Psalm 42 uses a different but related image, “my
soul thirsts for God.” “As a deer longs
from flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.” Again, the image of desire, of relishing, of
hungering and thirsting is used to describe our experience with God. In that there is an invitation to develop
this kind of taste for God. In the third
chapter of Ezekial, the very word of God is like a scroll to be eaten, a scroll
that to the prophet taste “sweet as honey.”

Taste, both in
its verb and noun forms, can be used to help us dig deeper into what it means
to be a follower of Jesus, a Spirit-formed person. The work on the Spirit in our lives can be
conceived as the work of developing our tastes and shaping our desires. Here is an overlap between spirituality and
ethics. Ethics is concerned with helping
us reflect on doing the right thing, but at the heart of the moral life is the
vision of the person who delights in doing good. Augustine is famously quoted as saying, “love
God and do what you will.” Developing
the right kind of taste, and taste for the right kinds of things carries into
multiple dimensions of life. In his
essay, “Thoughts Upon Taste,” Wesley wrote that “generous minds” have a taste
for human happiness, and a taste for the beauty in virtue.

If we can use the
notion of taste as a way to talk meaningfully about what it means to be a
follower of Jesus, to be a Spirit-shaped person, I think we can also use the
idea of taste to help us think about some qualities important for leadership in
the community of Jesus’ followers, the church.
There are some tastes that will serve us well if we are to lead the
church.

Cultivate a taste
for learning and growing. Here is a
favorite Wesley anecdote. In 1765,
Wesley was engaged in some conversation with some of his preachers who
apparently were taking Wesley’s own words about being a person of a single book
too literally. “But I read only the Bible.”
Then you ought to teach others to read only the Bible, and, by parity or
reason, to hear only the Bible. But if
so, you need preach no more. Just so
said George Bell. And what is the
fruit? Why now he neither reads the
Bible nor anything else. This is rank
enthusiasm. If you need no book but the
Bible, you are got above St. Paul. He
wanted others too…. “But different men
have different tastes.” Therefore some
may read less than others; but none should read less than this. [Wesley’s “less
than” was about five hours] “But I have not taste for reading.” Contract a taste for it by use, or return to
your trade. (Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodist,
227-228). Thomas Dodd notes in his book
on Wesley that Wesley enjoyed a novel now and again when some of his fellow
Christians considered the entire enterprise suspect. In his “Thoughts Upon Taste” Wesley argued
that good taste could be developed by engaging with “the writings of the best
authors.”

One of the best
things seminary can do for us is help us develop this important taste for
on-going learning and growing. I will
never forget an encounter I had in my very first church appointment. I was the
only United Methodist in a small community in far northern Minnesota which had
a number of Lutheran Churches. There I
was, fresh out of seminary, and I recall a pastor telling me, “I have not read
a book of theology since I left seminary.”
How disheartening. You don’t have
to aspire to deep scholarly reading alone, but keep reading, keep learning,
keep growing. John Wesley thought it
important enough to tell those among his preachers who did not want to read
that they ought to develop a taste for it of find other work.

Cultivate a taste
for emotions. This is my way of
encouraging emotional intelligence. Ask
nearly anyone who has served in some kind of supervisory position with clergy
and they will tell you that the thing that seems to get in the way of a more
successful ministry more often than not is the inability of a clergy leader to
be sufficiently emotionally intelligent.
A helpful way to think about emotional intelligence is developing a
taste for emotions, in oneself and in the situation in which one leads. Emotional intelligence is all about knowing
what’s going on inside oneself, managing that, knowing some of the emotional
atmosphere in the group one leads, and managing that as best one can. Developing a taste for emotions involves
slowing down, being reflective, being less anxious. When you chew your food too quickly, you
don’t have the opportunity to savor it.

When I was a
district superintendent in Minnesota, I remember bringing a pastor to meet with
the Staff-Parish Committee of the church to which the bishop was appointing
him. It was not his first choice of a
place of service, but I knew the people of the church to be solid people,
willing to embrace new leadership. At
one point in the conversation, someone on the committee said something about
friendship. If you know some of the
conversations about healthy boundaries for pastors, you know that there are
debates about just how deeply one can develop friendships within a
congregation. Well, this pastor decided
to assert his boundary. “I’m not here to
be your friend.” It took some work to
hold that appointment, and it lasted one year.

Cultivate a taste
for transformation – for a newer world, for new life. The work of the church is finally the work of
connecting people with the God of Jesus Christ and with others so that God’s
Spirit can work to change lives and through changed lives change the world. If we don’t have a taste for that, a hunger
for that, we can easily lose our way in leading the church.

Finally,
cultivate a taste for God. As a deer
longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God. Taste and see that the Lord is good. All the other tastes I have spoken of flow
from this deepest taste and hunger for God.
We long to learn because we long for the God of a beautifully complex
world, this God who continues to lure us toward even more complex beauty. We cultivate a taste for emotions, because
among the beautiful complexities of this world are the intricacies and
complexities of human persons and human relationships, and the salvific work of
God is the work of healing and wholeness.
We hunger for justice, righteousness, peace because the God we long for
also longs for these. To long for God is
to develop God’s longings for new lives and a newer world.

Long for
God. Develop a taste for God. Be Spirit-formed persons of taste. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love
of God, and the peace and power of the Holy Spirit make it happen. Amen.

It is an honor to be here with you
this evening. Thank you for the
invitation. Thank you for being here.

This particular night in the
Christian calendar is unique, and, from the perspective of the wider culture,
it is a both odd and unaccounted for.
You won’t find any “Ash Wednesday” cards at the Hallmark store, or
displays of Lenten prayer beads or ashes in a necklace. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, is
steeped in ritual, and for some even in the Christian faith, ritual can seem
cold and stiff. Many of our fellow
Christians do not mark this night, but we ought also to note that for many in
our own tradition, worshipping on Ash Wednesday does not have deep roots. In the 1945 Book of Worship for The
Methodist Church, there is no ritual or order of worship for Ash Wednesday at all. In the 1965 Book of Worship, a copy of
which I was given when ordained an elder, there was an order of service for Ash
Wednesday, but it did not include ashes.

I did not know that, though, in my
first appointment. I had not yet
received the Book of Worship, so I decided we should have an Ash
Wednesday worship service, and I was going to make it new. I had read about a ritual that involved
people writing on pieces of paper hopes, disappointments and confessions. These were to be burned, and cooled with
water, the ashes then to be impressed upon the forehead. Here’s what I can tell you. Glossy office paper, burned in a coffee can
and then drowned in water does not make for good Ash Wednesday ashes. Some of us left that service looking like a
bulletin board with singed sticky notes.
I’ve stayed with more traditional ashes since.

Whatever its history, whatever the
reticence among our more non-liturgical sisters and brothers, there is
something very special about this night, and about the season that begins this
night. In these forty days, excluding
Sundays, we prepare for Easter. We are
invited to self-examination, to repentance, to re-commitment. These forty days are meant as a time for
renewal and renewed development in God’s grace.
In that spirit, I want to this evening, invite you to a liminal Lent.

Liminal Lent? It sounds rather like something you might
purchase at a frozen yogurt shop. It
would have to be green, wouldn’t it?

Liminality is a concept used to
speak about what happens in rituals.
Liminality is a concept I encountered doing my doctoral work. Where else would one find such a word except
in academia? An anthropologist (Victor
Turner) used the term to describe a phase in rituals that marked rites of
passage. Rites of passage can often be
described in three phases: separation – a journey into the wilderness, a coming
together in worship with ashes perhaps; liminality – the transition phase when
re-orientation might happen, when one gets in touch with something deep and
profound; and aggregation – a coming back together into community. The liminal phase are those moments where we
are open to deepest transformation, those moments when something new is most
likely to touch us. The anthropologist
went on to say that there are places of liminality in culture beyond ritual
moments.

I think that there is a profound
liminal dimension to Christian spirituality, that is to life lived in the grace
of Jesus Christ, the love of God and the power of the Spirit. The liminal dimension to Christian
spirituality is when we come to touch and be touched in the depth of our souls,
when we come to understand that there are essential paradoxes to living in the
grace of God. The liminal moments in our
lives in Jesus Christ are those moments when we touch those essential paradoxes
and negotiate and renegotiate how we hold those poles of the paradox together,
when we weave and re-weave those poles of the paradox.

So I am about as far away from the
grittiness of ashes in our fingers and on our foreheads as I can be, but I hope
you will bear with me just a moment more at this abstract level. The liminal dimension of Christian
spirituality is coming to touch the essential paradoxes that are part of the
life of following Jesus, and recognizing that we are always renegotiating and
re-weaving those paradoxes. So what do I
mean by essential paradoxes? Parker
Palmer in one of his earliest books, a book that has more recently been
reprinted, writes about The Promise of Paradox. Palmer defines a paradox as “a statement that
seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible
truth.” He goes on to say, “the opposite
of a profound truth may be another profound truth” (xxix). Not all contradictions are paradoxes, but
being able to embrace true paradoxes is “a life skill for holding complex
experiences” (xxx) The promise of
paradox is “that if we replace either-or with both-and, our lives will become
larger and more filled with light” (xxix).
Palmer argues that it is “one of the great gifts of the spiritual life,
the transformation of contradiction into paradox” (6). Another author who has been a gift to my
journey of faith, the Benedictine nun Joan Chittister, writes, “Confronting the
paradoxes of life around us and in us, contemplating the meaning of them for
ourselves, eventually and finally, leads to our giving place to the work of the
Spirit in our lives” (15).

An invitation to a liminal Lent is
an invitation to rediscover the paradoxes that are at deep places in our life
with God in Jesus Christ, and an invitation to reweave these paradoxes.

Ash Wednesday is the perfect
introduction to a liminal Lent for in it we find ourselves right in the midst
of a profound paradox about our lives.
One traditional ritual phrase when ashes are imposed on our foreheads or
hands is “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” We are tonight reminded of our mortality, of
our bodily existence and of the limits of bodily existence. The writer Ernest Becker put it this way: (The
Denial of Death, 26): Man is a worm
and food for worms… housed in a heart-pumping, breath-grasping body that once
belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is
alien to him in many ways – the strangest and most repugnant way being that it
aches and bleeds and will decay and die.
You are dust, and to dust you shall return. Welcome to Ash Wednesday.

But there is something else about
us. We are capable of being caught up in
visions and revelations. We can be
“caught up into Paradise” and hear things “that are not to be told.” This was Paul’s experience. Ernest Becker recognized that, too. (The Denial of Death, 26): The essence of man is really his paradoxical
nature, the fact that he is half animal and half symbolic…. We might call this existential paradox the
condition of individuality within finitude. Man has a symbolic identity that
brings him sharply out of nature. He is
a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to
speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a
point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this
ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a
small god in nature…. Yet, at the same
time… man is a worm and food for worms.
This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is
dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-grasping body
that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it.

The story of our faith is that God took
dust and breathed the very breath of God into it – human being. We are dust and spirit, dust and the very
image of God. A few years ago I began
using another ritual phrase when I imposed ashes, “You are dust and
stardust.” Somehow those two need to be
held together. In a world where there is
an excess of shame, to only tell people that they are dust leaves out part of
the essential paradox that is life in grace.
A liminal Lent reminds us of our mortality, our finitude, and of our
capacity for vision, for goodness, for imagination and contemplation. Sometimes we lean too much one way or the
other, get stuck in self-hatred or forget our limits. Lent is a time to renegotiate and reweave.

Here is another paradox essential to our
life in the grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God and the power of the Spirit:
humility and heroics. Lent has often
been framed as more about humility, about our very real need for repentance and
caution about our tendencies toward self-importance. The traditional gospel reading for this
evening is Matthew 6 where Jesus warns about blowing our own horn spiritually. When we give, don’t even let our hands know
what they are doing. When we pray, go to
our rooms. When we fast, wash up and
smile.

I have come to think of the essence of
humility in this way, as a gentle strength that helps us approach the world and
other people with openness and curiosity – knowing that in this wonderfully
complex world there is always more to learn, and honestly acknowledging that
sometimes we get it wrong. Humility is
not about groveling and thinking badly about oneself. The lack of humility is not evidenced by
feeling good about what one might accomplish, or taking delight in progress
made or knowledge gained. The lack of
humility is evidenced by a lack of wonder and curiosity. The lack of humility is a failure of
imagination. The lack of humility is
less about making oneself too big than it is about making the world too
small. Humility is openness, the
capacity to wonder and question and be curious, the ability to laugh at oneself. It is not the opposite of a heroics that
delights in work well done, in knowledge gained. We know we are weaving the paradox of
humility and heroics well when we touch righteousness, when we live righteously
without becoming self-righteous.

One last paradox for this evening:
optimism and pessimism. When I was a
young man, I heard people say that you get more conservative as you get
older. I remember an international
relations professor mentioning that in a lecture. At the time I was none too pleased. It probably had something to do with my own
limited understanding of the meaning of conservative, but even more
objectionable to me was the idea that someone was predicting the course of my future
development. I didn’t care for
that. I have also come to think that maybe
what the persons who said that were really trying to say is that one becomes
more pessimistic as one grows older.
There is some truth to that.

When I was younger, there was a
President who at the University of Michigan spoke about working toward a Great
Society. Social theorists wondered what
people would do with all the new found leisure that would be made possible by
labor-saving technology. Great strides
were being made in civil rights. Looking
around, we have not created the Great Society, nor did we seem to win the war on
poverty. Technologies have not created
greater leisure, but instead have often led to lower wages and fewer jobs. Issues of hatred and bigotry and exclusion
have proven to be tenacious, and that is deeply discouraging. There are real grounds for pessimism.

Yet as followers of Jesus, we are not
left in Good Friday despair. For
followers of Jesus, there is always Easter, even in the midst of Lent. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote: An adequate religion is always an ultimate
optimism which has entertained all the facts which lead to pessimism.
("Optimism and Pessimism").
The poet Wendell Berry chimes in: “Be joyful, though you have considered
all the facts.” When we hold this
paradox together we are wide-eyed and open-hearted, we feel the hurt and
despair of the world and joyfully work for a better one, we know our own
failures and live joyously in the forgiveness of God.

I invite you to a liminal Lent, a Lent
where you touch the deep paradoxes of life in the grace of Jesus Christ, the
love of God and the power of the Spirit.
Touch that liminal dimension of life with Jesus. Ask how well you are keeping the poles of
these essential paradoxes together: dust and stardust, humility and heroics,
pessimism and optimism. I invite you to
a liminal Lent, to digging deep inside your heart, mind and soul, and here’s another
paradox. As we do this inner work, we
are better able to reach out to others for we have a better way of life to
share. As we do this inner work we are better able work for a better world, for
what is our vision of a better world but another paradox, that place where,
according to Psalm 85: “Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; justice and
peace will kiss each other.” Justice and
kindness embracing, a liminal text.

Let me wrap up with a final liminal
text, the end of Matthew 11 as rendered by Eugene Peterson. Walk
with me and work with me…. Learn the
unforced rhythms of grace…. Keep company
with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. Unforced rhythms of grace, that’s liminality,
finding those rhythms of life in the Spirit that keep together dust and
stardust, humility and heroics, pessimism and optimism. Absent those rhythms, we trip over ourselves
along the road, and we do that. Lent is
an invitation to find those rhythms again, to touch the liminal dimensions of
our lives and be changed.